


Fiasco at the Harvest Moon Howl

by Venivincere



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Third Person, Scott and Stiles are True Bros, Sheriff Stilinski is a Good Parent, Stiles Stilinski is bad at emissarying, Stiles Stilinski learns from his mistakes, Stiles and Derek pull each others' pigtails, except for two tiny parts in first person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-04-29 21:06:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5142443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venivincere/pseuds/Venivincere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott McCall's Alpha Diary, Entry #1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fiasco at the Harvest Moon Howl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatshouldntbe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatshouldntbe/gifts).



> Because many of you find first person POV off-putting, I want to assure you up front that 98% of this fic is in third person. Just one tiny section at the beginning and an even tinier one at the end is in first person, and you'll see the reason why with the very first line of the story.
> 
> This story does contain reference to one OFC, a Mrs. Chirops. Kudos to you if you figure out what kind of creature she is, if indeed it turns out she isn't actually a human with hygiene issues. ;-P
> 
> A giant thank you to my beta E for her excellent eye. Any remaining mistakes are my own. A thousand thanks, also, to the wonderful mods of this fest, for their patience and for the excellent job they do herding all us cats.
> 
> Whatshouldntbe, I took the spirit of one of your ideas and ran with it. I hope you enjoy the story.

**McCall Pack Alpha Diary, Entry #1**

It was Derek's idea to keep an Alpha diary. He told me about it tonight, how his mom kept one, and wrote in it every night the goings-on of her pack. Not just the battles they fought, or recording new members. She wrote about the day to day doings, too. Birthdays, promotions, new skills learned, the kids' developmental milestones. 

Every pack needs a history. Something they can relate back to, something that gives them continuity. We especially need it here, because we're young and inexperienced. Well, most of us have been here for a couple years, more or less, but it's only as of tonight that we're officially the McCall Pack. And there's been so much upheaval, leading up to now, that it's hard to keep track. I don't want to lose the knowledge we've gained. We've worked too hard, coming together as a team, to let that go.

Lately, Derek's had a lot of good ideas. Tonight, the more Derek talked about the Alpha diary, the more I became intrigued with this idea. And the longer I stare at this page, the more I realize that this idea? Is _brilliant_.

I guess I'd better start at the beginning. The whole thing started last year, when Stiles refused to become my emissary. To be honest, the pack wasn't too crazy about me asking him. Yeah, they liked him. Still do. Well, Derek might not have, back then. Back then, the only thing Derek thought was that Stiles was an asshole, but he tolerated him. I think Lydia even respected him a little. Definitely does, now. And yeah, I've known Stiles is kind of a spaz since the day we met when we were four, and that one kid threw sand in my face, and Stiles knocked him over and rolled him out of the sandbox. Even now he gets himself in hot water as fast as he can think about it. And me, too, when I let him. Which is usually more often than I should. 

I'm... not actually making a good case for asking Stiles to be my emissary. But the thing is, as much as he's a spaz and gets us into trouble and wasn't always universally loved, he's also really good at getting us _out_ of trouble. He's saved all our asses at least once. Some of us, many times. He's smart. He naturally just _gets_ stuff, and knows where to look for what we need. And yeah, when he does get something wrong, he tends to get it _really_ wrong. But once he knows about it, he pushes himself that much harder to fix it.

For instance, take the situation we're in right now. Or, well, the situation we've been in since last summer, which made me ask Stiles to be my emissary in the first place. Stiles proved to me long before I asked him that he would make an awesome emissary for the pack, despite all the arguments he made against it. Like, for instance... wait. You know what? Maybe I'd better just tell you the whole story.

::-----::

"No." Stiles's heart galloped. He tossed the lacrosse ball up at the ceiling. It missed by inches and dropped back down to Scott, who lay next to him on the bed. Scott caught it easily, but Stiles only noticed peripherally. He didn't dare turn his head because he knew that if he did, he'd be looking at Scott's kicked puppy face, and to this day, Stiles had only been able to resist that face once. And damn it, this was important.

"Why not?" asked Scott. He tossed the ball back at the ceiling, close enough to almost touch its shadow before it arced gracefully back down.

"Ooh, good one!" Stiles angled a hand up and let the ball fall into his fingers.

"Stiles--"

He gusted out a sigh and squeezed the ball tight in his fist. "Scott. Remember when Deaton talked about the darkness around our hearts?"

"Yeah? Oh."

Stiles stared at the ball between his fingers and felt Scott go quiet and still beside him. Sometimes it was like Scott could read his mind.

"But dude... the nogitsune is gone," said Scott. "You said yourself you didn't feel like it left anything in you."

Stiles huffed an exasperated breath. "I don't think it did. But even though it's gone, that doesn't mean the darkness isn't still there. Do _you_ feel any different?" Stiles dared a glance over at Scott, who kept his puzzled gaze trained at the ceiling.

After a long pause, long enough for Stiles to flop back down and morosely try to pick out the exact point Scott was staring at, Scott answered, "No. That -- I don't know -- that feeling is still there. Like the shit is about to hit the fan. _Trepidation._ You, too?"

"Me, too."

"So? How is that a reason not to become my emissary? If anything, it proves even more that you understand me better than anyone else could." 

Damn him for being obtuse. Also, "ACTs?"

"Stiles," Scott huffed and leaned over, shoving his arm. "I want to get into vet school, man."

Stiles raised his hands, palms up. "Hey, I'm not judging! That's -- it's cool."

Scott nudged Stiles's shoulder with his own. "Thanks."

Stiles remembered the ball in his hand, and shot it up toward the ceiling. This time it, it touched. "Fuck it. How many points is that?"

"Twenty three."

"How many are we playing to?"

"Thirty." Scott tossed the ball back, again missing the ceiling by less than an inch. Stiles caught it, and also managed to miss the ceiling on the return. Yes!

"Look," he said. "How could you want someone with built-in darkness advising you? And it's not even that. I mean, look at Deaton."

"What about Deaton?" said Scott, stilling. The ball bounced off his nose and he caught it on the rebound. With his claws.

"Nothing against the guy, but -- " Stiles fidgeted and windmilled his arms " -- well, actually, everything against the guy. He irritates me. Irritating! He--"

"Yeah, I get it! He irritates you," said Scott. He threw the ball into the corner of the room and turned on his side, resting his head on his hand. "But what is it about him that makes you not want to be my emissary?"

" _He's_ an emissary. And he sent us into the water to die, Scott." Stiles swallowed, and finally met Scott's eyes. "I never want to be in a position where I might have to do that."

::-----::

The first day of their junior year dawned clear and bright, and Stiles cursed every lumen (thank you, Word of the Day calendar!) with every strained muscle fiber in his body the moment he heard his bedroom door open.

"Kiddo, get out of bed and go to school," said his dad, in the tone that meant, 'do it now or I'll flip you off the mattress'.

"Nrrrghhh," said Stiles, jerking his arm out over the side of the bed. His body promptly followed, and he slithered out from under the covers onto the floor, on his face.

"Jesus, kid," his dad muttered, heading for the stairs.

It wouldn't be so bad, thought Stiles, three minutes later as he stood under the spray in the shower, if he hadn't burrowed into bed less than three hours before.

There had been locusts. Not the regular cicadas that sang their way from mid-July through the end of October at top volume. Not even actual locusts, which never showed up in California, anyway. No, these were evil, _enchanted_ locusts, who showed up at the nemeton like a moth to a flame and began slowly eating their way outward through the Preserve and poisoning everything in their wake with deadly locust-spit.

Derek had noticed them first, like a hazy ball surrounding the nemeton. It took every scrap of free time Stiles had, between shopping for school supplies and some new, non-ripped and non-bloodstained jeans that day, to figure out where they came from and how to eliminate them.

Apparently, it took fire. Stiles flinched when he told the pack, and sighed with relief when Scott made Derek sit this one out. He very selflessly didn't blame Derek or Scott even a little bit for the thousand tiny burns on his body. They'd lain down a ring of mountain ash around the nemeton, encompassing the locusts where they were working their way outward, then set them on fire. Turns out, the mountain ash held them in perfectly well while they were alive and evil. Dead and popping into flame? Not so much. One good gust of wind sent the glowing sparks across the mountain ash barrier, and it would be a miracle if his dad didn't jump to the conclusion that he was doing serious drugs, what with all the pinpoint burns on his skin and in his clothing.

He threw on clean clothes and didn't roll up the sleeves on his way downstairs to breakfast. As crappy as the locusts were, they were still easier to deal with than the selkies in July. And way easier than the harpies in June. Stiles shuddered.

"What happened to your face?" his dad said, when he slunk into the kitchen.

Stiles sagged into the chair in front of his breakfast and mumbled, "Acne."

"Tough luck, kiddo."

"You're telling me," said Stiles. He could have complained that pimples on the first day of school were the worst. He could have opined the loss of dating opportunities, not that he ever dated anyway. He could have said any number of things to get his dad to believe they were pimples and not miniature burns on his face, but instead, he shoveled a huge bite of pancake in his mouth so he couldn't accidentally give up the game while trying not to give up the game. Sometimes less was more.

"You haven't had an outbreak like that since freshman year," said his dad, picking up a turkey sausage and making a face at it. "Everything okay?"

"Uh... yeah. Just nervous about my classes this year."

"Stiles, you're a straight A student. I'm sure you'll do fine." His dad glanced at the clock over the sink. "As long as you're on time."

::-----::

"Dude, there is something wrong with Mrs. Chirops."

Stiles scrutinized their biology teacher. She seemed perfectly normal, aside from the large, hairy grandpa ears thing she had going on, and the hunchback, and her Walmart fashion sense. "What -- does she smell like cancer, or something?"

Scott shot him a 'dude -- what?' look and said, "No, she doesn't smell like cancer! But she does smell."

After Mrs. Chirops assigned a hellish amount of homework for the second week of classes and dismissed them, Stiles discreetly sniffed her on the way out the door. 

They stopped at Stiles's locker first. He dumped his book and grabbed his lunch. "If anything, she smells sort of like celery. Old celery. But human nose, here. What's with her?"

"She smells human," said Scott, slowly, "But also kinda like... a bird cage and cat pee."

"Ick. I'm so glad you didn't tell me this after we started eating."

When they hit the cafeteria they bee-lined for the pack table.

"There's a simple explanation for all this," said Lydia. "And no, she's not evil just because she assigns criminal amounts of homework." She shot a glare at Isaac.

"Lydia, it's us. Even you have to agree that evil is the more believable option."

Lydia raised an eyebrow at him, then shrugged. "Fair point," she said. "But it could be she just owns birds and cats."

"Okay, fine, that does make sense in a very stereotypical way," said Scott, shooting Stiles a shut up glare when he whispered ACTs under his breath again, "except that it's not quite right. It's not _exactly_ bird poop and cat pee. It's just similar. And she smells a little bit musty, too, like -- okay, Stiles, remember when we went camping in the preserve a couple years ago and it rained a little?"

"Yeah... and?"

"And remember the tent was still a little damp when we put it away? She smells like the tent."

"Mildew," said Isaac. Lydia wrinkled her nose.

"Maybe we can use spray bleach to get rid of her," said Jackson.

Everyone swiveled around and stared at him.

"What?" he said.

"We should probably find out what she is and consult the bestiary about how to get rid of her," said Stiles. He side-eyed Jackson and tried not to shudder.

Scott shot him an unreadable look, then said, "I'm calling a pack meeting tonight. Derek's place, because my mom's home tonight. I'll text you the time once I confirm with him."

::-----::

Derek wasn't available until eight PM and that was perfectly fine with Stiles, because he had about four hours of homework just for Chirops, and just about as much for the rest of his classes. It was probably a good thing it was Friday, otherwise he'd never get it all done by tomorrow. He managed to get through most of his Biology homework by the time he had to leave. Pre-Calc and English would have to wait. 

His dad was worked afternoons this week, so he was able to take off without having to make explanations, thank goodness for small blessings. If he got home by midnight, he might not have to tell his dad anything about this latest suspected threat. He may know about the supernatural, now, but that didn't mean he had to know anything about anything, until they actually knew that there was anything to know in the first place.

Scott drove up on his bike just as Stiles tumbled out of his Jeep. Halfway up the elevator, Scott perked up. "Pizza!"

That sure beat the soup Stiles had slurped straight from the can earlier. Scott slid open the steel door.

Like always, Stiles searched out Derek first. He found him sitting on the corner of his table with a paper plate overflowing with pizza slices drooping from his left hand. His right hand was busy shoveling most of a slice into his mouth.

"You know, chewing is actually a thing," Stiles said to him, as he and Scott disappeared into the kitchen. Derek glared at him and made a point of tearing off the point of his next slice and swallowing it down whole.

"I'm pretty sure your imminent heartburn isn't actually threatening to me," said Stiles around the corner of the kitchen doorway, piling a few slices onto a plate. He stopped in the doorway on his way out of the kitchen and looked up at Derek. "Actually, you probably don't even get heartburn, do you?"

Scott sighed. "Let's just get started," he said, around a mouthful of cheesy, pepperoni goodness as he plopped down in the corner of the blue couch.

"Let's wait for everyone to get here," said Derek. "That way we won't have to waste time explaining anything more than once, and I can get you guys out of here faster."

"What. You have a hot date tonight, big guy?" Stiles wiggled his eyebrows at Derek, then sat down next to Scott and angled his legs over the free seat.

Derek glared at him from behind a red solo cup. Full of _soda_. "Way to be intimidating."

Lydia, Allison and Isaac wandered in with Macy's shopping bags, filed through the kitchen, and emerged with plates and cups. They took the other couch. Erica and Boyd arrived a few minutes later, late and flushed, and what was this -- holding hands? Stiles lit up and opened his mouth just in time to receive a deadly glare from Boyd, who tugged Erica into the kitchen. Stiles sighed, and sunk his teeth into the rim of his solo cup and gulped down Coke. He managed a respectable belch just as Erica emerged from the kitchen with a precariously balanced plate.

"Nice one!" she said, giving him the eyebrow. She settled into the loveseat, Boyd sinking down next to her with two overfilled solo cups. He took a sip from each before setting them down on the coffee table.

"Let's get this show on the road," said Derek, just as Jackson barreled in, shooting a "Sorry!" at Scott.

Stiles rolled his eyes and took another giant bite of pizza. He about choked when Derek shoved his leg off the remaining sofa seat and settled down next to him, a warm, solid and pleasantly fragrant presence, just as Jackson emerged from the kitchen, looking for a seat. 

Jackson glared at Derek, then squeezed himself in next to Lydia, who gave him the hairy eyeball and scooted over incrementally. Next to Stiles, Scott swallowed, and set his plate and cup down on the coffee table. "Okay! Let's start with what we know."

It only took a few minutes to get everyone up to speed on Mrs. Chirops.

"I don't see what's wrong," said Jackson. "She's a middle aged lady with bladder issues. _All_ middle aged ladies have bladder issues."

"Not ones with good urologists and excellent health insurance," said Lydia with a voice so crystalline sharp, Stiles expected blood when he looked up. "Don't believe everything you see on television." 

Jackson grunted. Stiles's laugh changed into a hiccup, and he promptly choked.

And choked again when Derek's heavy arm pounded his back. He coughed a couple times, hard, turned his head, and frowned. "Dude, what the fuck?!"

Derek glared at him. " _Really?_ You were choking!"

"Continuing on, _ahem_ ," said Scott, shooting them a look, "like I explained earlier, they're not really human smells. Given the shit that's gone down all summer, I really think this is something to look into."

Everybody quieted down because actually, Scott had a point. The locusts were just the latest in a long line of creepy shit that had kept everyone busy in some capacity or other over the summer. The locusts weren't even the worst. In June, there had been _salamanders_.

Stiles suppressed a shudder, hoping no one would notice. He surreptitiously glanced at Derek, only to find him focused on Scott, who was saying, "Lydia and Allison, can you go through the bestiary and see if you can find anything? Stiles, see what Google has to say. Derek, Isaac, Jackson, Boyd and Erica - let's pair up and search the preserve. And I think we need to institute a twenty four seven watch on the nemeton. It's like a magnet, and I'd rather have early warning rather than risk anyone getting hurt."

Stiles heard something in Scott's voice, a catch, a burr, a lowering in tone. His gaze shot up and he saw in Scott’s face, as he shot nervous glances at Allison and Stiles, the same thing that ate Stiles in the dark hours, kept him from falling back asleep after the nightmares. Stiles rubbed the sudden sweat out of the palms of his hands with his thumbs.

"I can take the first watch tonight," said Derek. It was only then Stiles realized Derek's hand was still on his back because he pulled it away and rested his elbows on his knees.

"Everyone check your schedules and report back on group chat," said Scott. "Derek, we'll get out of your hair."

Stiles picked up his plate and cup in a bit of a daze. He helped clean up, and in only a few minutes, found himself the last one climbing the stairs to Derek's front door. Derek followed, seeing them out. He stopped Stiles with a light touch on his shoulder. "You okay?" he said, quiet.

Stiles stared at him, but couldn't divine anything from Derek's expression. "Fine. Uh, thanks," he said, and walked out before Derek could say anything else. Weird.

Scott was standing next to his bike putting on his helmet when Stiles got to his Jeep. "I'm going to talk to Deaton about this," he said. "I know he said that we'd be opening a door. That Beacon Hills would become a beacon for the supernatural again. But this summer--"

"It's not like a candle in a window. It's more like floodlights, isn't it?"

Scott gave him a grateful look. "Yeah, like that. And I don't think any of us were expecting more than candles."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"No. But thanks. I'll talk to him at work after school tomorrow."

Stiles found himself smiling. He clapped Scott on the shoulder. "Sure thing. Call me if you need me," he said, and climbed into his Jeep. It was still pretty early. Only nine fifteen. He could make a dent in his Pre-Calc and English homework, maybe finish it all tonight. Who knew what the rest of the weekend might bring?

::-----::

The next afternoon, they were back at Derek's place as soon as Scott got out of work.

"We haven't found anything on Chirops yet," said Lydia, sitting next to Allison. Both of them had their laptops open on their laps.

Stiles had his open, too. He had a hundred and forty-seven tabs open in Chrome that might have something to do with this, but he only started researching a little before noon, after his father had threatened to throw out his pancakes if he didn't get out of bed and eat his breakfast before lunchtime. So he hadn't finished going through them all yet, but judging from the information he'd been finding, nothing looked hopeful.

Derek was once again sitting beside him, however that had happened. Which would have been fine, if he hadn't smelled so good. Stiles felt simultaneously hungry and turned on, and decided he didn't have time to be weirded out by that.

"I talked to Deaton today," said Scott, no preamble. "He agrees that we've been experiencing way more supernatural infestations than he anticipated."

"Infestations?" said Isaac. "He called them that?" Lydia's eyebrows perked up and she tapped on her keyboard. She nudged Allison and pointed at something on her screen.

"Yeah, actually. Once I listed for him all the things we've faced since... well, since we came back from the dead. I thought I'd bitched about everything at work while it was happening, but I guess not. He was... kinda surprised, I think."

"So what did he say?" asked Jackson, actually interested, his generally contemptuous attitude shelved for once.

Scott gulped, and shot a glance at Derek. Stiles turned to look at Derek, but he was just as blank-faced as ever. "He said, because there hasn't been a proper pack guarding and taking care of the territory in so long, that the protections on the land have worn off."

Stiles hadn't taken his gaze off Derek, and as Scott spoke, he watched Derek's face crumple just the slightest bit. Something tugged at Stiles's chest, but he brushed it off. Now was not the time. "So what does that mean?" he asked.

Scott shot another glance at Derek, but continued. "He said that now that there's an alpha and an established pack, we can do the rituals that used to be done that bring out the natural protective magic in the territory." Stiles watched Derek begin to nod at Scott's words.

"You know what Scott's talking about?" Stiles asked him.

Derek sighed. "Yes, I -- yeah. I guess I'd forgotten about it. It was something we did every year, as a pack, at the Harvest Moon. It's called the Harvest Moon Howl. A -- a kind of a ceremony, I guess, but mostly, I just remember the party afterward."

Stiles latched onto that idea with the fervor of any teenager. "Whoa. A party? That will help get rid of the evil?" He elbowed Derek. "Tell me this party does not involve bloodshed of any kind. Tell me it involves liquor. Or better yet, beer. Lots and lots of beer."

Derek shot him an annoyed look and elbowed him back. Stiles oofed out a pained breath, and glared.

"We did typically have a party afterward, with lots of food. It is a harvest thing, after all, even if we didn't farm, or anything." Derek thought about it for a moment. "Mom kept a garden, though."

"Deaton told me a little bit about the ceremony," said Scott. "No matter what we find out about Mrs. Chirops, we should plan on doing it."

Derek's head shot up. "But it has to be done on the Harvest Moon. That's in a week and a half."

Scott winced out a pained smile. "Yeah -- that's what Deaton said. Do you think we can manage it? We have a lot to do before then to get everything set up."

"Maybe. I remember the ritual, barely. I remember the order we did everything in, I mean. Deaton talked for awhile then did the ritual spell, because that was the job of the emissary. But I was a kid. Mostly, I just remember the howling and the food."

"Deaton says he can get a book with the ritual, but..." Scott trailed off.

Derek's shoulders slumped and he let out a sigh big enough to turn Stiles's head back to Scott. 

"What is it?" said Stiles, resigned.

Scott winced again. "He isn't going to be here to do it himself. He says it wouldn't work very well, anyway, since he's not my emissary." Scott pauses. "He says I have to find my own emissary to do the ritual, if it's going to work."

Stiles watched Scott assiduously avoid his gaze, then whipped his head back around to Derek, who also wouldn't look at him. Neither would anyone else in the pack. "Wait. Wait just a minute. You can't mean _me_. Scott, we talked about this!"

Everyone continued to say nothing. Stiles felt the anger and the resentment building. His palms got sweaty, and his heart thudded hard and fast in his chest. He turned himself around bodily in his seat and drilled holes in Scott's head with his eyes. "Scott, we talked about this. At length. I have _valid reasons_ for not wanting to be your emissary."

Next to him, Derek let out an annoyed humph. Stiles looked around the room. Jackson was breathing a sigh of relief, which frankly made Stiles just plain mad. As much as he didn't want to be Scott's emissary, that didn't mean he'd make a _bad_ one, for crying out loud! Stiles frowned even more as he scanned the room. Lydia and Allison were glued to Lydia's screen. Isaac kept his eyes trained on Scott, worried, but hopeful. Boyd and Erica stared at Stiles, faces carefully blank.

"Look," said Scott. "Maybe you don't have to officially agree to be my emissary for all time to do this. Maybe we can work out a temporary arrangement?"

Yeah, right. Stiles knew exactly how that would turn out. Derek nudged him in the side when he didn't answer, and he shot Derek a death glare in return. He turned back to Scott. "Fine. Fine, but this is temporary. Just until we complete the Howl. And then we're going to have a serious talk about how you need to respect my boundaries."

Scott had the decency to grimace, at least. Stiles stood, and scooped up his laptop bag with his free hand. "Send me the ritual when you get it," he shot over his shoulder, and then slid open Derek's door with a bang and barreled through it.

::-----::

He fumed all the way home. He fumed all through the rest of his English homework. He fumed all the way through making dinner, and slammed the plates on the table still fuming.

"Do I even want to know what this is about?" his dad said, eventually. "Strike that. If it's about anything supernatural, I want to know."

Stiles looked up from the fork he'd stabbed into his chicken breast and glowered at for the last ten minutes."Yes. No," he said, changing his mind. He sighed. "Not really. Scott and I had a fight."

His dad's eyebrows perked up. "Serious, I take it."

"Yeah, pretty much."

His dad shoveled in another bite, chewed, and swallowed. He put his knife and fork down when Stiles continued to stare at his plate like his dinner had betrayed him. "Want to talk about it?"

Stiles looked up from his plate for the first time since the start of dinner to find concern in his dad's eyes. He didn't really want to talk about their suspicions of Mrs. Chirops, but maybe... "Yeah," he said, letting out a relieved breath. "Scott asked me to be his emissary."

His dad's face blossomed into a smile, which promptly faded when he saw that Stiles was still angry. "What's wrong? I thought that was something you wanted."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "It was."

"But?"

"But not anymore. Not since the nemeton."

His dad shot him a knowing look, and frowned. "Ah," he said. "I'm guessing this has something to do with Deaton?"

Stiles shot his dad a grateful look. "Dad, I still don't understand. I mean, knowing what I know now, I'd still go into the water to save you."

His dad shifted in his chair, opening his mouth, ready to argue, but Stiles cut him off. "I know how you feel about that. You don't need to tell me again. The thing I'm struggling with is, I don't understand how he could have sent us potentially to our deaths. I just -- I don't think I could do that, dad. I can't even kill a spider. How am I supposed to accept that I may need to risk the lives of my pack, in the line of duty?"

His dad settled back into his chair and shut his mouth. He stared at Stiles for a long moment, and Stiles could see on his face the moment he switched gears and really started processing Stiles's dilemma.

His dad took a deep breath. "When we're adults," he said, sparing a moment to glare at Stiles, who was settling back in his seat and rolling his eyes at his dad, "we make our decisions for ourselves. There's no one there telling us how to order our lives, or what decisions to make. We choose what decisions to make and when to make them, and we live with the consequences of our choices."

"So, what. Are you saying that it's not Deaton's responsibility that he sent us into danger? That it's our fault for deciding to go?" Stiles leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the dining room table. "What about your deputies. Don't they have to go into danger at your command in the line of duty? Doesn't it make you responsible?"

His dad offered a wry smile. "Yes, they do, mostly, but there are two major differences. I do need my deputies to go where I assign them. But they understood when they signed up that the job would occasionally put them in harm's way. Not often, but sometimes. If the duty is extra hazardous, I tell them up front and give them a no-penalty option to take a pass on it. And on occasion, they do. But most of the time, they accept the risk because it's what they chose to do when they signed on as deputies. And officially, if something were to happen, I would take responsibility because I am in command. My deputies wouldn't lose their jobs, or be held responsibly. I would."

Stiles found himself rolling the edge of the place mat in between his fingers. It was very fascinating. He couldn't take his eyes off it as he swallowed around the lump in his throat.

"First, Deaton wasn't in a command situation. You were not contracted to work for him in the situation with the nemeton. He had no power over you in a workplace regard. Legally, if you were all over the age of eighteen, he would be considered an unpaid advisor. 

"But that doesn't matter, anyway. He's still culpable, and that's because you were all minors. Legally, I could go after him for endangerment of a minor. And believe me, kid, there are still days I'd like to slap charges on him. Or maybe just wring his neck and be done with him.

"As far as moral responsibility goes, then yes. If, after you turn eighteen, you choose to become Scott's emissary, then you have a moral imperative to protect your pack. Sending them into danger for the greater good of the pack may be something you'll need to do, and it will be something you'll have to come to terms with. There may be times when danger is the best of a bad lot of options. When that happens, you'll have to make a choice. Advise your pack and take the consequences, or don't advise them, and take _those_ consequences. Whatever they decide, that's their decision. But you care about them, so of course their consequences will affect you, too."

Stiles's leg jiggled in place and he still couldn't raise his eyes to his dad's. After a minute, he said, "I don't think I'm ready for that kind of responsibility yet. It was always a someday thing, you know?"

"Stiles," said his dad, with so much relief and fondness that Stiles couldn't help but tear his eyes away from his hands and look at his dad's watery smile. "It's okay to decide you can't be that right now. It's okay to want something like that for later in your life. You love little kids, but you wouldn't want to have a child right now, would you?"

Stiles stood, went around the table, and threw his arms around his dad's neck. "Thanks, dad." 

::-----::

"So, I'm temping," said Stiles, breezing into Deaton's office and sliding up onto the counter.

Deaton sighed and swiftly rummaged around in the bookshelf behind his desk. "So Scott tells me. Here is the book. The ritual is on page seventy-four." He slid the book into a plastic sleeve and zipped it shut, then handed it over.

"Score!" said Stiles, hopping off the counter.

"Stiles."

"Yeah?" said Stiles, opening his backpack and sliding the book in. He looked up at Deaton.

"This is powerful magic you're attempting. The more your heart is in it, the better the spell will work." Deaton sat down in his desk chair and leaned his elbows on the blotter.

"So, what are you saying?" asked Stiles, frowning.

"I'm saying that intent is everything. You really have to commit to the ritual if the protection spell is going to work." He made shooing motions with his hands. "I have to be on a plane early tomorrow, so I can't spare any time to talk about it. Bye, Stiles. Good luck."

And with that, he picked up the land line and began dialing, gesturing to the door with his gaze.

Stiles, confused, wandered out of the office to Deaton saying, "Yes, I need to rent a car. Detroit Metro, round trip, starting...." The door banged shut behind him and he tailed it out to his jeep. By the time he reached Scott's house, he'd added a healthy amount of anger to his confusion.

"I mean, of _course_ I intend to go through with this ritual. Why would he even say that?" Stiles flung the ball up toward the ceiling with too much force; it bounced, leaving a scuff mark, and angled off toward the closet.

Scott winced, and rolled off the bed to fetch the ball. "I don't know, man."

"And where does he get off implying my heart isn't in it?" Stiles's elbow jiggled against Scott's as he rolled back onto the bed, ball in hand.

"Look. He just doesn't know you. _I_ know you do everything with heart," Scott tossed the ball carefully toward the scuff mark, barely missing it, "and that's what counts, right?"

Stiles flipped on his side, facing Scott. The ball bounced off his shoulder. "Thanks, dude." He drove his head into Scott's ribs and tackled him off the bed onto the floor. "Let's play Mario Kart. Miss-the-ceiling is boring."

::-----::

So yeah, Stiles read the ritual, and yeah, he listened at the next pack meeting, and the more he listened, the more he heard Derek talking about the party part of the evening, and the more he got invested in the idea of a keg.

"No, seriously. I know this guy who'll do a delivery for fifty dollars extra, no questions asked."

Derek, sitting next to him on the couch, huffed through a frown. "If I'm not buying a keg legally for me, I'm certainly not buying or allowing a keg to be illegally bought for you. Stiles, I've been in enough trouble with your dad. What makes you think I want to add on contributing to the delinquency of minors? Especially when one of the minors is the _Sheriff's son._ "

"You are such a killjoy, Derek," said Stiles. You can't tell me you didn't sneak out as a teenager and go drinking in the Preserve."

Derek leaned away from Stiles and shot him a grumpy-cat glare of you-are-stupid.

"Oh, no. It's freezing in here. The least you can do is let me bask in your werewolf BTUs." Stiles leaned into Derek, who continued to lean further away, which resulted in Stiles face-planting in Derek's armpit. "Mmm. Warm," he said, muffled.

Derek lifted his arm and popped his hand down twice, fast, on Stiles's ass. "Stiles, your nose is like an _ice cube!_ Get it out of my armpit!"

The pack erupted in muffled sniggers and Derek shoved Stiles completely off the couch into the gap between the coffee table.

"I'm not buying beer for you guys, _or anything else alcoholic_ ," said Derek, glaring at Stiles, who'd spotted a loophole and looked ready to jump right through it, "So let's just finalize the details and finish up here."

"Ooh, hot date?" Stiles said, heaving himself back up on the couch and plopping down practically in Derek's lap.

"Stiles, you ask that every time," said Scott.

"Yeah, and he always changes the subject!"

"Maybe because it's none of your business," said Derek. Stiles shot Derek a glare. Derek glared back.

"Fine. Since we can't do alcohol, let's do potluck sign-ups." Stiles pulled his phone out of his pocket. "Everyone go to perfect potluck dot com. I set us up a sign-up sheet last night. Last name McCall, password hooowl with three Os. All lower case." He pokes at his phone then holds it up. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

Everyone shot "wtf?!" glances at everyone else, but Scott pulled out his phone, and everyone reluctantly followed.

"Uh... how do you even know about this website?" asked Isaac.

"Yeah, hitting a lot of potlucks these days?" said Erica.

"Maybe he's doing the bingo circuit, too," said Jackson. Lydia and Allison had the decency to stifle their sniggering, but Erica, Isaac and Jackson laughed outright. Boyd typed furiously on his phone and ignored them all in a way that made Stiles a little bit envious.

"Really, guys?" said Stiles, " _Really?_ It just so happens the guys at the station had a potluck for Officer Brennan when he retired last month, and Officer Niedemeijer on dispatch told me all about it so I could sign my dad up ASAP. If you get in fast enough, you can be the one to sign up to bring cups or plates or utensils so you don't have to cook anything. So, useful life skill here. Learn it."

Stiles's phone dinged. It was an email from perfect potluck dot com saying that Boyd had signed up to bring paper plates. Stiles flashed his phone. "See? Useful skills."

Everyone looked at their phones. Boyd said, "I am the veteran of a hundred church potlucks. You snooze, you lose."

"Yeah, I bet you tackled a hundred old ladies to get to the sign-up sheet in the breezeway before anyone else," said Jackson.

"My grandma says my pot-luck sign-up skills at Beacon Hills Calvary Baptist are legendary," said Boyd, staring directly at Jackson with an oh-so-straight face.

Erica held it a beat, then cracked up, everyone following in short order.

"Okay, we have one last thing to discuss, and that's the ritual," said Scott. "Stiles, you got the book from Deaton. Do you think you'll have the ritual learned by next week?"

"The ritual itself is short. The thing that's going to take some time is the sort-of sermon thingy I have to write and say as part of the ritual. I have to talk about the losses the pack has suffered over the course of the previous year and then talk about the "bounties of the land" that have helped us replace our losses," said Stiles. "I think this ritual is old, like, dating back to an agrarian society kind of old."

"Did any of us farm anything this past year?" asked Scott, completely seriously. "A garden, maybe?"

Several _wtf?!_ stares and a whole lot of silence passed before Boyd volunteered, "Uh... my grandma has a garden in the back yard. Does that count?"

"I don't know," said Scott.

"Did you eat anything out of it?" asked Derek.

"We've been eating out of that garden since the middle of summer. We're still eating out of it."

"That should count, then," said Derek. "My mom used to have a garden. I think I remember Deaton talking about it during the ritual when I was a kid? Or maybe that was when mom used to hand off zucchini and tomatoes to him. I don't know."

Stiles got a little verklempt at that.

"But your whole pack ate out of the garden. Will Boyd's grandma's garden work for us? Only one of the pack's eaten the bounties," said Stiles.

"Two," said Erica. Heads swiveled. "What? Is it so hard to imagine Boyd might have invited me over for dinner?"

"Cute, maybe. Not hard," said Isaac. Erica cuffed him on the shoulder. Isaac winced and brought a hand up to rub it.

"Or _was_ it hard," said Stiles. How could he not, with an opening like that?

Boyd and Erica shot him double-barreled glares of doom.

"Fine, fine! Sorry!" said Stiles, holding up his hands.

Boyd and Erica shot each other grins and fist-bumped.

"I admit defeat," said Stiles. "You guys are way cooler than me and always will be."

"Amen," whispered Jackson, under his breath, and Lydia bit her lip on a grin.

"So are we done here?" asked Derek, ignoring them.

"Seriously, dude, your date will wait," said Stiles, snickering.

" _Stiles_ ", said Derek and Scott at the same time.

Scott continued, "Just to recap, we meet in the preserve at Derek's old house at 11 PM, potluck item in hand. From there, Derek leads us to the clearing at the escarpment overlooking Beacon Hills, where we can see the rising moon. We do the ritual, we howl, and then we party."

"PAR-TAY! Woo hoo!" Stiles pumps his fists in the air. People stare. He pulls them down. "Uh, yeah."

"Fine. Now everybody get out of my loft," said Derek, standing. He grabbed the shoulder of Stiles's flannel shirt and pulled.

"Watch it, big guy! That's 100 percent designer Target you're molesting!" said Stiles, standing.

"I'll buy you a new one if you'll just _get out_."

"Fine!" said Stiles, ducking out from Derek's hand and straightening his shirt.

Derek beat everyone to the door and showed them out. Stiles was the last one out the door, murmuring, "Sourwolf," as he passed.

::-----::

Never let it be said that Stiles did today what he could put off until tomorrow. Mostly not from laziness, though there was a fair bit of teenage _I dun wanna_ mixed in with everything he managed to accomplish. Mostly, it was because he got distracted. Which is why he found himself at five PM on the day of the Harvest Moon half-assing his way through a sermon-thingy, which was something so far out of his wheelhouse that he had no idea where to start. It wasn't like he and his dad went to church, or anything. Not since he was a little kid, anyway. And even then, he got parked in Sunday School for the duration of the hour. So of course he Googled, "how to write a sermon" and found himself several hours later reading about Aztec blood rituals on Wikipedia, and that wasn't going to help.

 _Boyd_ , he texted. _What does ur grandma grow in her garden._

_You want a list of everything?_

_How about stuff that grew well? Maybe had a good yield this yr?_ he asked.

_Tomatoes. Collard greens are coming in nice 2._

_That shd do it. Thx._

_Aren't u leaving this a little late?_

_Shut up itll be done._

::-----::

In the end, he managed a list of supernatural attacks the pack had endured over the previous year, and an ode to fresh vegetables focusing on the amazing properties of collard greens (thank you, Wikipedia), and a statement of fervent desire, through the words of the ritual, that the land offer the pack its protection through the coming year.

The wolves began to howl, and Stiles, Lydia and Allison joined them, and after a minute of discordant and mildly embarrassed yowling, everyone looked to Derek to cue them when to stop. He ended his howl with a few yips and a puzzled expression on his face, and that was it.

"Okay! Let's party!"

Stiles dove for the blanket where they'd laid out the food.

"It's enchiladas, and you can thank my mom," said Scott, settling down next to Stiles and lifting a corner of the tin foil on the pan he brought, "though she made me help."

"Good! That means you can make them for us sometime."

"Dream on, Stiles."

Stiles snorted. "Love you too, buddy."

Everyone filled their plates and started talking, and after a while, Stiles noticed Derek losing his puzzled look and joining the conversation. They talked about school and how ridiculous the work load was for Junior year.

"That's nothing compared to college," said Derek. "I once had five term papers due in the same week."

They talked about their skirmishes with the supernatural from the past summer.

"Jackson, I thought you were going to pee yourself when that harpy said she wanted to, and I quote, _lay some eggs_ with you."

"Stilinski," said Jackson, "I'm going to murder you slowly."

"Yeah, yeah. You're all talk."

After every scrap of food had been consumed, Scott said, "We should run. As a pack." As the wolves got up and headed into the trees, Lydia and Allison crawled over to Stiles and sprawled out next to him. Lydia produced a bottle from her bag.

"I love you," said Stiles. A growly roar sounded in the not-so-far distance.

"Ugh. I thought I cured you of that," said Lydia, but she was smiling.

"You did, until you brought alcohol. You've demonstrated what a good provider you are. All that's left to do is mate." Another growl sounded, and a yip. Allison wound up and something hard hit Stiles on the side of his head.

"Hey!" He rubbed his temple as Lydia and Allison laughed.

"I was only joking," Stiles grumbled. "No need to throw things at me."

"It was _one_ thing, and it was a cork. You'll be fine," said Allison.

And he was, all night, talking and joking and getting mildly tipsy, until near dawn, when the wolves slunk back into the clearing, panting and tired.

"So. Do you think it worked? Are we protected for the next year?" Stiles asked Derek, as they packed up and trudged back to their cars. 

The puzzled look returned to Derek's face. At least, that's what it looked like in the light of the lowering moon. "I don't know. It didn't feel the same as it did when I was a kid."

"Maybe that's because nothing feels the same as it does when you're a kid," said Scott, coming up beside Stiles. Stiles shot him a look, and nudged him with his shoulder.

"Maybe," said Derek. He still looked puzzled, but let it drop.

::-----::

"Holy _shit_ , how can this be happening? We have our biology mid-term tomorrow!" said Stiles. "I need to be studying, not dealing with some supernatural slime mold!"

"Slime waits for no man," said Scott. He jumped in front of Stiles, claws out and slashing. It didn't do much to stop the quivering, squelching mass. "Ugh, this is gross. Stiles, you'd better get out of here. I think it's spreading."

"Not happening, buddy," said Stiles, coming up behind with his baseball bat. His _modified_ baseball bat. It was more of a mace, now, ever since the evil gnomes that attempted an infestation of the Preserve just before Christmas. The mace had come in handy more times than Stiles was comfortable admitting, in the ensuing month and a half.

"If my claws aren't doing much, your bat won't, either. But at least I have super healing. Call Derek. We need backup!"

Stiles dialed and put the call on speaker, then dropped his phone into the front pocket on his flannel shirt so he could swing and talk at the same time.

"What," said Derek.

"Slime," said Stiles. "And it's growing. Bring backup."

"What? Where?"

"The school. Biology lab."

Where they had been doing detention, for mouthing off in Chirops's class. Again. She'd left the room ten minutes previous with a particularly ominous, "If either of you move a muscle, _I will know_ ," and the Physarum Polycephalum she'd grown in a petri dish to do a cytology demonstration in class earlier in the day promptly began to pulsate a sickly yellow and grow.

Derek arrived twenty minutes later, Lydia in tow.

"You only brought _Lydia_ for backup?" said Stiles, slashing the large yellow blob, which had grown to fill most of the front of the room. Scott was trying to cut it in half from the other side, with his claws. The slashing didn't do much more than cause it to outgas small spore clouds.

Derek glared at him, full bitch face.

"You will pay for that," said Lydia. She pulled a long bar out of her pack and handed the cord to Derek. "Plug this in."

As soon as Derek found an outlet, she turned it on, and Stiles discovered that it was a black light. The slime mold stopped moving and growing under the UV rays, and changed from bright yellow to glowing violet.

"Here, hold this," she said, handing the light to Derek. "Keep it pointed at that thing." She dug back into her bag and pulled out a propane torch and a lighter straight out of an Alton Brown cooking special. Then she looked at the slime mold. "Right. I think you can finish this off," she said, handing Stiles the torch. She turned the gas nozzle, flicked the lighter, and said with a deadly sweet grin, "Consider this your payment."

::-----::

By the time the school year ended, the pack encountered ("and defeated!", Stiles interjected) seven different threats to Beacon Hills, from the poison pixies at the end of September (Isaac suggested suffocating them, to everyone's horror, but it worked), to the frankly terrifying _weredragon_ at the beginning of June. Allison helped with that one.

"Not all hunting is about killing," she said. "Sometimes it's about finding and eliminating a threat another way." She suggested pheromones; apparently it was mating season, and the weredragon had wandered into the territory looking for a mate, unable to transform back into human form until it found one.

"So the thing is," said Scott, at the pack meeting following the last day of school, "I think we all know the Harvest Moon Howl didn't work."

"Uh... no kidding," said Stiles. "It was a complete fiasco." Various rumbles of assent sounded around the room.

"I'm not sure what went wrong," said Scott, "but last year, we only had a few days to prepare. So I thought I'd bring it up now so we'd have the summer to prepare."

"What makes you think we'll be able to fix what we got wrong last year?" asked Jackson. "It's not like any of us know any more about the ritual than we did last year."

"What Jackson said," said Stiles. "And I can't believe I'm actually saying that."

"Yeah... about that."

Stiles swiveled around and focused on Scott. Nothing good ever came when Scott used his guilty voice. Usually, it meant that Stiles had fucked up in some way. Like, that Christmas when they were nine and Stiles accidentally broke Mrs. McCall's Los Reyes Magos statues she'd got from Villa del Carbón the previous summer when she'd taken Scott to visit his abuela in Mexico City.

Although he had no idea what he'd fucked up this time. He thought back to the ritual from the year before. Yeah, maybe he could have put in a little more effort on that sermon thingy, but really, what else could he have talked about?

"What could we have gotten wrong?" asked Stiles. "I followed the instructions and the ritual in the book exactly. Everyone howled. We partied. What, were we supposed to pour beer on the ground as an offering, or something?" he said, derisively. "Maybe bury a plate of food?"

Scott very carefully didn't look at Stiles when he said, "I did talk to Deaton about the ritual. To see if there was something we might have missed."

The pit of Stiles's stomach made itself known in a fisty sort of way.

"He said that if the protection spell didn't work, it was probably because the caster lacked commitment."

The room went silent; Stiles didn't think anyone was even breathing. He felt his face heat up and his fists clench, and couldn't move his eyes from the floor if he tried. 

"You know I care about this pack. More than anything, except my dad. That I'd do anything to keep us safe. I _have_ done everything I could to keep us safe."

He sat in the ensuing moments of silence, burning: with shame, with anger, with humiliation, and he wasn't sure why, but in his gut, he knew that Scott was right, that he was responsible. He felt like he had just after the nogitsune was destroyed. Half of him felt like crawling in a hole and never coming out, or running away; half of him burned with a desire to do everything he could to distance himself from the evil that made him enjoy destruction, made him enjoy plundering the carefully constructed relationships in his pack, made him crave injuring others and feeding on their suffering.

"I know you have," said Scott, quiet. Even without werewolf senses, Stiles knew Scott was telling the truth. It was almost more painful than if it were a lie.

There was a vague huff from the corner of the sofa where Jackson sat, and the thwak of Lydia's arm thumping Jackson in the face as she whispered, "Not now!" but it was enough to propel Stiles out of his seat. The sliding door slammed home behind him as he ran out of Derek's loft.

::-----::

Stiles spent the next week pretty much in his room, emerging only to use the bathroom and cook his dad dinner before he went on shift. On Day Two of his hibernation, his dad asked at dinner, "Is it a supernatural thing, or a Scott thing?"

"A pack thing, sort of," Stiles said. "But not supernatural."

"Oh?" His dad looked right through him. Stiles squirmed.

"It also might be a, 'Stiles failed and made a fool of himself again' thing." There, he said it. He still felt like throwing up a little bit.

His dad nodded, and winced. "Anything you want to talk about?"

Stiles's hands shot up. "No! No, thank you."

"Thank goodness." His father had the gall to look relieved.

"Dad!" he groused.

"Look, kid. If you do want to talk about it, you know I'll always listen. But experience will always be a better teacher than your old man."

"Uh... thanks?" said Stiles.

"Besides," said his dad as he rose from his chair and grabbed his travel mug of coffee and Tupperware of leftovers, "If I don't leave right now, I'm going to be late." He shrugged on his jacket and paused in the doorway, and waited until Stiles looked up at him. "But I mean it. If you need me -- just call, okay?"

Something in Stiles relaxed. "Yeah -- yeah, I will."

Day Three of his exile found Scott pounding on Stile's door. "Look, Stiles. We should talk about it."

"No we shouldn't," said Stiles, from the other side of his firmly closed door.

"I know you tried your hardest," said Scott, "but we still need to come up with a plan. _Please._ "

Scott at his most beggingly earnest was almost impossible to deny. But only almost, and only when Stiles took dramatic measures. He burrowed deeper into the bed and threw the blankets over his head. 

"We're sorry, the Stiles is closed due to emergency maintenance procedures. Please check back again later."

"Stiyalllllls," said Scott, "come on, dude. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be."

"Yes it is," said Stiles, voice muffled, but loud enough (he knew, from practice) to be heard on the other side of the door.

"Look, I get it--"

"Scott, I _failed_. I'm having a hard time with it," he said, tired, and irritated that Scott wouldn't just give it up and leave him alone. "Can you please let me work it out in my own time?"

There was silence for a few moments before Scott answered, "Yeah, man. I'm -- I'll talk to you later. Okay?"

Stiles didn't answer, not wanting to risk any more conversation. After several minutes it was too stuffy under the blankets, and Stiles risked throwing them off his head. He listened, but there was no indication Scott remained on the other side of the door. He took a deep breath, and reopened his book.

On Day Five of his hibernation, Stiles decided that showering was his friend. He was just pulling on his boxers afterward, when his window slid open behind him, and he got an ear full of wolf whistle. Literally.

"Hey there, sexy! Nice buns," said Erica. She rolled through the window and toppled onto his bed, hand on hip. "Check out those abs!"

Stiles did the only thing that came naturally, and shrieked. He grabbed up his damp towel and held it in front of him like a shield. "Erica! What the everloving--"

"Shhhhh!" said Erica, holding her finger to her lips and cocking her head. "Your dad..."

"My dad left for work fifteen minutes ago," said Stiles, reaching for his jeans and t-shirt, "which you knew because the cruiser isn't in the driveway."

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed. "I ran here through the Preserve,."

Stiles looked at her feet; she had hiking boots on, not heels. Thank goodness it hadn't rained in the last few days. And that she'd left her feet hanging off the bed. 

"What do you want?" he said, turning away from her and tossing the towel down on his desk chair. "I am ninety nine point nine percent sure Scott didn't ask you to come check up on me."

"I came to find out why you've been ignoring my texts," she said. "You missed the pack meeting last night."

Stiles almost felt guilty about that until he realized, "What pack meeting?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "The pack meeting you would have known about if you'd been paying any attention at all to your phone," she said. "Where is it, anyway?"

Good question. Stiles pulled his t-shirt on the rest of the way and looked around the room. No dice. "Uh... I don't know. Turn around."

"Why? It's nothing I haven't seen befo--"

"Just turn around and spare the modesty of my pasty white ass," Stiles complained. He waited until she huffed and turned, then jumped into his pants and yanked them up. "Okay, you can turn around."

"Seriously, though, where is your phone?"

Stiles sat down on his desk chair and thought about it for a minute. He'd taken it to the kitchen to look up a recipe. Uh... yesterday. Oops. "It's downstairs and probably out of juice."

"Well, we're having another pack meeting Saturday evening. Derek has been asking around and has some ideas he wants to share."

"Is that so." He gave her his best fuck off glare.

"Look, Stiles. I don't know what you have up your butt, but please remove it. Everyone does embarrassing shit. At least you didn't piss yourself," she said, rising from his bed and heading for the window. She paused, straddling the window sill. "So man up and deal with it."

Stiles stared at her, unwilling to admit being mollified.

She huffed, and then dropped out of view.

Deep into the wee hours of Day Seven of Stiles's hibernation, only a short while after Stiles had got Scott Riley back safe to his tank in Call of Duty and dropped off to sleep, he heard the window sash slide up once again.

"I'm going to nail that fucker shut one of these days," he said, to the Derek-shaped silhouette.

Derek very politely took off his shoes and coat and laid them on the sill before padding over the the bed. He sat down on the edge, much like Stiles's dad used to do when he was a kid, when tucking him in. "I talked to Erica."

"Yeah?" Stiles grumbled. "Good for you, using your words."

Derek huffed. "Please come to the pack meeting tomorrow. I found out some information I think will help. I talked to the Lopez pack alpha and she said..."

Stiles drifted as Derek talked, his voice light and low, something about the ritual the Lopez pack performed last year, everyone sitting down on the pumpkins and singing, and then the snowmen had to all line up in a row and howl before they could get married, and--

"Stiles!"

He shot straight up in bed so fast, he bonked into Derek's nose. He rubbed his forehead. "Uh, sorry."

"You fell back asleep. Where did I lose you?"

"At the reception, I think. Drinks cost a pine cone apiece..."

Derek shoved Stiles back down onto his pillow. "You are such an asshole. Go back to sleep. Just make sure you're there tomorrow."

"Mmmhmmm," said Stiles, already drifting off again. "I'm sorry," he said, in that sleepy mind space where honesty is the best policy. "I'm sorry I fucked it up."

"Just come tomorrow and help us fix it," said Derek, gently. It's the last thing Stiles heard, and he wasn't sure, but he thought he felt a hand caress his cheek as he slipped past the last of wakefulness into sleep.

::-----::

"So we're really doing this?" asked Stiles, for the third time, looking around the clearing in the Preserve where the ritual was once again going to be held.

"What part of 'yes' didn't you understand?" asked Derek, audibly annoyed and stomping around, looking for a decent place to sit. He walked into the trees a short way while Stiles pulled his flannel shirt higher up on his shoulders and buttoned it. It was chilly out, and it looked like rain.

Derek emerged from the trees with a tree. "Uh..."

"Just sit down on it, Stiles," said Derek, setting it down at the edge of the clearing.

Stiles located a space with no bumps or branches and sat. It wasn't as uncomfortable as he would have thought. At least, not until Derek sat down next to him. Right next to him. Like, our-shoulders-are-brushing next to him. Stiles raised an eyebrow at him until he realized Derek was digging a tablet out of his pack.

"This is a map of Beacon County," said Derek. He pointed to a large, wild section. "This is the Preserve. The blue boundary outlines the old Hale pack territory."

Stiles looked at it. It was large. Very large. "The territory contains over half of the Preserve and the city of Beacon Hills."

"It's one of the largest werewolf territories in the state of California," said Derek. Stiles shot him a glance that lingered; pride was a good look on him. "According to the Lopez pack, we should walk the boundaries. Their emissary walks theirs once a year and refreshes the boundary runes."

"This is beginning to sound very Dungeons and Dragons," said Stiles, skeptically. "I don't know anything about boundary runes."

"Which is why I also brought this." Derek switched from the map to a pdf file, which turned out to be a scanned copy of a book of runes. "The Lopez alpha let me photocopy their emissary's rune book."

"You didn't go to Deaton?"

Derek glared at him. "Would you?"

Stiles shrugged. "Fair point."

"Anyway, he's made it clear he's not Scott's emissary. I didn't think it would be a good idea to rely on him, in case that affects the spell." Derek didn't look at him as he said this.

Stiles swallowed around his feelings and eventually said, "Good thinking."

Derek let out a very slightly shaky breath and said, "Thanks. Rosalia said there are instructions for invoking each refreshed rune, but they aren't complicated and only take a moment or two for each one."

"That is probably a good thing," Stiles said, angling his head up at the sky and noting the mid-morning slant of the sun. "Let's look at the map again."

"The clearing is at the edge of the Preserve. If we start here and follow the escarpment, we can angle around down here on the canyon path and pick up the border through the city at this point," said Derek, pointing, "then join up with the Preserve again over here, and work our way back to the escarpment."

"Here, let me see this," said Stiles, reaching for the tablet. He scanned the map; not a legend in sight. "How many miles is that, exactly?"

Derek breathed a laugh. "More than we can do in a day," he said, giving Stiles a small, genuine smile. "I guess I'll just have to put up with you."

"Yeah," said Stiles, his own small smile fading at the echo of his failure. "I guess you will." 

Derek stared at him a moment, thoughtful, then reached around him and scooped him off his seat. "Let's get going."

"Hey!" Stiles squawked, pinwheeling his arms, but he followed after Derek to the first boundary rune.

::-----::

A week later, they were only halfway done with the runes. It was pouring down rain, and Stiles arrived at a run to the door of Derek's loft.

"Quick," he said, urgently pushing past when Derek slid back the door, nonplussed. Probably because they hadn't planned to get together today because of the rain. "We have to get these winding wonders of potatoey goodness on a plate before they get soggy," he said. He trotted over to Derek's kitchen.

"Here," he said, handing Derek a plate heaped high with two cartons of curly fries. He grabbed two other plates, which contained the best bar burgers in Beacon Hills and a giant pickle apiece, which, considering the setting, looked far more obscene than they ought to have. "Let's eat."

He could feel Derek watching him as he set down his plate, let his still-dripping jacket slide to the floor and plopped down in his regular spot on the couch.

Derek shrugged. "Okay," he said. He pulled a container of orange juice out of the fridge, then sat down in his own regular spot on the couch. Next to Stiles. _Right_ next to Stiles.

Stiles wiggled over into the arm of the couch just a tad bit more. Wing room. That was a thing, when you were eating. Eventually Derek said, so very mildly, "I didn't know we were getting together today."

Stiles snorted, and narrowly avoided choking on a bulging mouthful of curly fries. "'Ee eren't," he mumbled, pausing to chew and swallow at championship speeds. "I decided to come over anyway so I could study the rune book."

"What happened to your Call of Duty marathon with Scott?" Because that was a thing Stiles told Derek he and Scott had planned for their next free day together.

"My duty is here, with my people."

Derek rolled his eyes and served himself some curly fries. "I'm thinking that, actually, your duty is to be a pain in my ass."

"Don't tell me my work here is finished so soon," said Stiles. "I'm not even halfway done with my curly fries."

"And you haven't even started on your burger yet. Or your pickle."

"How about _you_ start on my pick... ickle, uh oh." He managed to set his plate down on the coffee table before Derek's elbow reached his arm. "Ow."

"Stiles, that was bad, even for you," said Derek. But when Stiles turned to look Derek in the eye, he saw that he was blushing.

"You poser! You liked that!" said Stiles, picking his plate back up, only to have it clatter back down on the table when Derek tackled him into the corner of the couch.

"We are not going to talk about each other's pickles ever again, Stiles," he said, and Stiles barely understood him, what with his face being buried in the poofy arm of the couch, and all his giggling.

Derek moved to the other end of the couch to finish his food, but he slid the tablet over to Stiles.

It was still raining, steady and soaking, several hours later when the light began to dim. Stiles looked up from his reading to find Derek asleep, tucked up in the corner of the couch, a copy of _The Mezzanine_ tented over his chest. During the course of his reading, Derek's feet had found their way into Stiles's lap, and for an hour or so, now, he'd been using Derek's ankles for a tablet rest while he studied.

He stretched as well as he could without jostling Derek. For some reason that he was unwilling to parse out just then, and against the tenor of most of his previous interactions with Derek, he didn't want to disturb Derek's peace. Instead, he lowered his arms and wrapped one hand loosely around one of Derek's ankles, and just looked at him. And okay, it should have been kind of creepy, but it wasn't.

It was a joke, before, but maybe he blurted it out in the moment because it was true. Maybe Derek really was his people. 

And the following week, once he and Derek had finally finished the runes and reported it at the pack meeting, and got genuine smiles and accolades from everyone in the pack (including Jackson), Stiles knew there was no maybe. All of them: Scott, Derek, Allison, Lydia, Boyd, Erica, Isaac, even Jackson -- all of them were his people.

::-----::

"So, Dad," said Stiles, promptly falling silent. He twirled his fork in his spaghetti, and sighed, frowning.

His dad looked up when Stiles didn't continue. He finished his bite of salad and said, "This sounds serious."

Stiles let his fork fall to his plate. "Have you ever done something you didn't want to do at first, something really difficult that you still weren't sure of, but you threw caution to the wind and went ahead and did it anyway?"

His dad paused, and a terrible look washed over his face.

Stiles winced, and waited.

"Stiles. Please tell me this is not about condom usage, or lack of condom usage." 

"No!" He shouted. "No, god, dad, no! Wipe that look off your face. No one is pregnant! No one has an STD! This has nothing to do with mutually enjoyed body parts in any way whatsoever!"

His dad's face morphed from terrible to puzzled, as he let out a breath. "Good," he said. He took a deep breath. "So. Something I was unsure of but I did anyway?"

Stiles let out the breath he was holding, and picked up his fork. "Yes."

"Well... yes," his dad said. "It was when mom and I decided to have you."

Down went the fork again. Stiles didn't know what to say to that. He didn't even know what to think, or even what he was feeling, just that there was a swirling, yawning pit in his stomach where his mother used to be, and Stiles suddenly remembered why he and his dad rarely talked about her.

He swallowed down the lump in his throat and managed to croak out after a few moments, "Y--yeah? Why?"

His dad pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair. "You probably haven't studied this in your history classes, but do you remember learning anything about the year nineteen ninety-six?"

"Uh... not really. Except Clinton was President, wasn't he?"

"He was, in his first term. Your mom and I had been married five years by then. We'd talked, occasionally, about having kids. We both wanted kids. But the longer we were married, it seemed the crazier the world was becoming. We were both leery of bringing a child into the world where children were killing their parents, antigovernment groups were squaring off against federal officers, war was breaking out all over the world, and genocide, and we didn't know from one day to the next if Iraq still had nuclear bombs pointed at us or not. Crazy people were walking into schools with guns and opening fire. Back then, that was unheard of.

"How could we justify bringing a child into a world that just seemed to go crazier and crazier by the minute?" 

Stiles's dad sighed and looked up at him, and Stiles watched him as his eyes traced his features, as though he were seeing Stiles in a new light, a revelation.

"How did I come to be here, then?" He dropped into the silence.

His dad smiled. "Well, it was fourth of July. We'd both taken a week's vacation and were down on the pier in Redondo Beach for the fireworks. It was crowded, and there was music playing, and the longest, brightest fireworks show I'd ever seen was going on. And your mom -- she was right there, and beautiful. And I understood that there was so much more to this world than I could ever know, and that not all of it was bad. And I knew that one of the _good_ things would be any child that came from your mother. So I told her that, as we walked back to the hotel that night. And that was it."

Stiles hadn't realized he was staring until he blinked. Hadn't realized he had tears in his eyes, until they fell down his cheeks. He hastily ran a hand over his face. "And I was born the following year. Wait--" In dawning horror; he dug out his phone, opened his calendar, and poked at the screen. "Oh my _God, Dad_ \-- are you telling me about the night I was conceived?" His eyes shot to his dad. "Oh my _God_ , you _are!_ That _was_ the night I was conceived! How could you! I did _not_ want to know about that! Gross!"

He looked up from his phone to find his dad silently belly-laughing into his hands, his whole body shaking with it.

It took him a long time to settle down. "Kid, the look on your face." 

Stiles just shot him a look, his mouth full of spaghetti. When he swallowed, he said, "Eat your dinner, old man. See if I ask you anything, _ever_ , after this."

"So you say," said his dad. "Did I at least answer this question?"

Stiles sat back in his chair and considered. "Yeah," he said, eventually. "Yeah -- I think you did."

::-----::

Everyone was there, of course. The clearing seemed particularly bright tonight. Earlier, Scott had said something about it being a supermoon, but Stiles was too worked up about the ritual to give it much thought. He paid enough attention to realize that it wouldn't mess up the ritual, and maybe even would help it along, a bit, and then got back to his regularly scheduled angst.

It took a month after the runes to write what Stiles felt would be the right thing for the ritual. And it involved... writing what he felt. And had learned. 

His dad helped, and Scott; everyone in the pack gave him something, and he did his best to put that into words -- the giving. Because in the end, that was what the ritual was all about: not just taking, but the giving, too.

He took a good, long look at his pack gathered around him, clumped together on Derek's log and sitting on the coolers. He cleared his throat.

"I'll keep this short," he said. Jackson snickered, but... that was actually okay.

"Tonight, we gather here to mourn and to celebrate," Stiles continued. "What I'm about to say may sound weird, but it'll make sense, I promise.

"We have grown together as a pack this past year, fighting the dark creatures the nemeton has drawn to us. So tonight, we need to mourn the loss of our antagonisms between each other, which we lost along the way, as we learned to work with one another, and learned that what we thought were barbs and teasing were actually tools to force us to do better." He looks at  
Jackson, and he'd swear later, Jackson was blushing, though it was impossible to tell for sure under the light of the moon.

"We mourn our frustrations with each other, because they taught us to be patient with one another." He shot a teasing grin at Derek, and got a small, genuine smile in return.

"We mourn our ignorance of our differences, because, through the course of our trials, we discovered new strengths we never counted on." He nodded at Allison, and got a nod in return.

"We mourn the abuses we've suffered in the past because by learning from them, we've taken away their teeth." Isaac shot him a small smile.

"We mourn the dead ends and false leads, because they gave us ammunition for future battles." He gave Lydia a wry smile.

"We mourn the loss of our isolation because it encouraged us to seek one another out." He smiled at Boyd and Erica, and Boyd leaned over and kissed the top of Erica's head.

Stiles turned to Scott. "And lastly, we mourn the loss of fear of the unknown, because it teaches us our selfishness and the path to correct it, and opens us up to so much good that we don't even realize could exist."

Stiles watched Scott perk up, tense, just a tiny bit. The pack picked up on that tension, and the wolves' eyes began to glow. "Scott, you asked me last year if I would be your emissary, and I said no. But I think it's time, now, to take a leap of faith.

"I formally accept your request to be your emissary."

Scott rushed him, and swept him up in an awesome bro hug, and whispered, "Thank you, Stiles," into his shoulder.

Stiles patted his back a couple times, then pushed him back, a little anxious. "I gotta finish this, buddy."

Scott sat back down on the log, and Stiles repeated the words of the ritual. And as he spoke, he felt a gathering anticipation, a magical potential coalescing around them. The wolves stood as he finished, Allison and Lydia following, and as Stiles finished speaking, the pack raised their eyes to the moon and _howled_.

The threnody of their joined voices began mournfully, mingling with the magical potential, as though they were pulling an annealing power down from the moon. Everything concatenated, stresses resolved, and as they did, the mourning howls of loss rose in pitch and shortened in length, became expressions of thanksgiving. Stiles watched his pack as they shot surprised glances at one another, never stopping their howls, expressions of confusion, then joy at the experience of their first guided howl.

After a few moments, the howls turned to yips, wolf-laughter, that wound down the territory-wide resonance of their howl to the clearing, and the yipping turned to human laughter in their throats.

They fell together in a pack hug and swayed together for a long moment, the laughter dying down between them. Then they separated and fell onto the blankets in front of their potluck spread.

"That was _awesome_!" said Stiles. Jackson threw a bread roll at him and Stiles stuck his tongue out. Jackson made as if to throw another one, but Derek, who had settled beside Stiles on the blanket, leaned across Stiles and flashed his eyes at Jackson.

"You surprised me," said Scott, after they'd made considerable dents in the food. "I don't know what to say."

"What do we say when somebody does something nice?" said Stiles, around a mouthful of Lydia's truly heavenly lemon cake.

Scott socked him in the arm, laughing. "Your such a dick, but I love you, man. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Just don't ask me to help you in a way that might end in your death, and we'll be okay."

"Fair enough." Scott raised his pop can, Stiles did the same, and they clinked on it. Stiles looked around in surprise when he heard everyone else clinking their pop cans together, too.

"That's something we can all get behind," said Allison, with a small smile for Scott and Stiles. 

The night arced over and drew down toward dawn. The temperature dropped, but the light from the moon still shone bright in the clearing. Isaac starfished on his back, hogging a whole blanket to himself, but the rest pack paired off and shared; Scott and Allison, Lydia and Jackson, Boyd and Erica. The conversation died down to quiet notes and pauses.

Derek and Stiles were the last to set aside their plates. Derek lay down and put his arms behind his head, staring up at the moon. Stiles watched him, his coiled strength, and saw the gentle playfulness so well hidden behind the chiseled exterior, the intense desire to be a meaningful contributor behind the stoic facade.

Derek turned his head away from the moon and gave Stiles a small smile. "It's okay," he said, and that was all Stiles needed. He sunk down beside Derek until his head rested in the hollow of his shoulder, Derek's body a long line of heat against his side. The arm under his head snaked down around his shoulders, and he brought his own hand up to link his fingers with Derek's.

"I feel like an alpha," Scott said, a little while later.

"You've _been_ an alpha," said Stiles.

"But that was different," said Scott. "I've always felt the power of being an alpha. Ever since breaking through the mountain ash barrier. This is something different. I don't know how to explain it, really."

They ruminated on that for awhile, then Derek said, "My mom once told me that the Harvest Moon Howl helped her understand her place in the pack."

Scott jumped on that. "Yeah! That's what it is. It's like the power of knowing who I am to you guys. Like, the power of knowing I'm the alpha."

Stiles expected to hear catcalls at that, but Boyd said, "I felt it, too. By the end of the Howl, I felt exactly where I fit in with everyone."

"It feels good. Secure," said Jackson, playing it straight, for once.

"Peaceful and powerful at the same time," said Erica.

"Allison? Lydia? What about you?" asked Scott.

"I feel connected," said Allison, into Scott's shoulder, low enough that Stiles had to strain to hear it. 

"I feel like someone's taken away the plastic wrap and we're touching in person, on all sides," said Lydia. "In a non-germy way."

Everyone chuckled.

"Derek?" Scott asked.

"I feel like I've finally come home." Stiles leaned into Derek and squeezed him around the waist, kissing him quick in the crook of his shoulder.

"Stiles? What about you?"

Stiles sighed, and thought about it for a moment. He felt all those things that everyone else felt, but there was something more, too. "I feel like I've grown up."

"Maybe we all have," said Scott.

"Grown together," said Derek. "Scott -- my mom used to keep something that she called her Alpha diary. It was a place to record pack milestones and keep track of our history. She wrote in it every day. She said she started it the first day she became Alpha.

"When Laura came back here, before she left, she said that one of the things she was going to do was search the house to see if it survived. If she found it, I never knew, and I never did when I searched. But I thought, maybe it's something you want to start for the McCall pack?"

Scott stared at the moon, dreamy and thoughtful. "That's a perfect idea, Derek. Thank you."

"Hey, now that we've done a proper Howl, I wonder how often we're going to have to take care of supernatural baddies?" asked Erica.

"I hope this means we can stop patrolling the nemeton," said Jackson. Everyone grumbled agreement with _that_.

"I don't know about other 'baddies', but I figure there's a fifty percent chance Chirops will be gone," said Lydia.

Scott raised his head and looked over at Lydia. "Why only fifty percent? I thought we were pretty certain there's something weird going on with her."

"Because Allison, Stiles and I have gone through all our research and haven't discovered what she could be, but you can smell there's something not quite right with her. I figure there's a fifty-fifty chance your nose is wrong and we all know there's no way we've been through all the possible resources that could explain what she actually is," she said.

"Huh," said Scott, shrugging where he lay. "Makes sense."

"We could take bets," Stiles suggested.

"I don't really care one way or the other," said Boyd. "If she's evil, we'll deal with it. If not, it's a non-issue."

And that, thought Stiles, is the power of Pack.

::-----::

**McCall Pack Alpha Diary, Entry #1, continued:**

So that's how it happened: how we all came together as a pack, and how Stiles became my emissary. At the very end of tonight's Harvest Moon Howl, all the feelings and doings of the night, of the last two years, really, came together in one, solid whole.

As we were getting ready to leave the clearing tonight, Stiles asked me, "So, Scotty, are you going to take Derek's suggestion and start an Alpha diary?"

I thought about it as Stiles slung his bag on his back. We each took a handle of the cooler; it was much lighter than it was at the beginning of the evening. Our pack was gathering their things around us. I sniffed the night air, felt the solid bass hum of the land in my bones, its might; I felt the pull of the moon, drawing my own power up out of my bones. We were connected. We were all connected, by our friendships, by our roles, bathed in the light of the moon and bounded by our territory, and I was our leader.

I placed my hand on Stiles's shoulder, and smiled. "Yeah -- yeah, I'm going to. And I know what I'm going to write first."

**End of McCall Pack Alpha Diary, Entry #1**

FIN


End file.
